Weekly Recap 6/21 - 6/27

I feel like I keep saying this, but it's been a busy week, so for now just a quick recap of workouts:

Sunday - 8 very hot (90 degrees) and humid miles. I managed to squeeze in my run between rainstorms. It was very gross and muggy out. I'm very glad it was only 8 miles!

Saturday - 3 miles

Friday - 4.1 miles

Thursday - Weights. I only managed to get in one of the two weight workouts... but it's still and improvement. I have a feeling this is going to be much harder now that I don't have the gym classes to motivate me to do the workouts.

Wednesday - 4 miles.

Tuesday - No workout. Mom was in town so we did some sight seeing.

Monday - off

Total Weekly Milage: 19.1 miles

New Shoes and pre-marathon training thoughts

I got a new pair of shoes! Yay! This has been long overdue, as I think my last pair was purchased in December. I took them for a little test run tonight and they feel nice and cushy. That should be all I need to be ready for marathon training, right? :-)

Marathon training starts this week. I will be using the training plan from the book Marathon Method by Tom Holland. I used the advanced half-marathon training plan for the Colfax Half and was very pleased with it. I really like how he incorporates some strength training into his plans. I enjoy doing other types of exercise, besides running, so I like the fact that I don't have to wonder how i'm going to squeeze it into a running plan. The plan includes 4 days a week of running. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I should do the beginner or intermediate marathon plan. I think i've settled on the intermediate plan. The beginner plan only goes up to 30 miles/week as the highest milage, which is what I did for my half-marathon. I feel like for a marathon I should get up a little higher. The intermediate plan may be a little bit of a stretch for me, but I figure I can just listen to my body and if I need to take a few easy days I will still at least be getting in the milage prescribed for the beginner plan.

As for goals...
I'm hesitant to really set a goal time as I have never run a marathon and really have no idea what I should be shooting for. Based on my 1/2 marathon time it seems like most predictions should put me around 4 hours and 10 minutes. Personally, I would be happy running 10 min miles, so that would put me around 4 hours and 22 minutes.

As for training my only goal is to complete as many of the training runs as possible, without injury, and to get all of my long runs in.

I'm definitely nervous about a few things. First, I have never run longer than 13.1 miles, so even some of the training runs seem a bit daunting to me. Second, I'd really like to continue to go to some of these running club runs, but the runs are tough and i'm not sure i'll be able to do it once I get into the longer distances. Last, I'm nervous that life or injury will get in the way of me completing the training.... but I guess that's something all marathoners just have to learn to deal with and I'll take it as it comes.



Weekly Recap:
I was definitely sore this week. Tuesday's track workout, followed by a running club run on wednesday left me very sore. Additionally, now that I walk or bike to and from work I think i'm putting more overall miles on my legs. I tried to take it a little easy this weekend to get ready to start training next week. I still didn't manage to get strength training in this week.

Sunday - 6 miles. Humid, but not too hot. Got to try out my new shoes.
Saturday - a very hot and humid 3 miles
Friday - off
Thursday - off
Wednesday - 4.58 miles with running club. I didn't think I was sore from tuesday's track workout until about 2.5 miles in...then it sunk in.
Tuesday - Track workout. 1000, 600 X 3 (200 rest between the 1000 and the 600, 400 rest between sets). 4.26 miles total with warmup and cooldown.
Monday - off

Total Weekly Milage: 17.84 miles.

I am officially slow.

I tried out a different running club yesterday. It was a track workout. Now, I know that i'm not fast by any means, but man did yesterday's workout make me feel slow! We did 1000/600 x 3 (400 rest interval between sets, 200 rest after each 1000). I managed to hold about a 7 min mile pace for the 1000's, but I was the slowest person there. It's probably good for me, as I could use a little more speediness :-).

Weekly Update 6/7 - 6/13

It's been a busy week! I wish I'd had time to update during the week, but i'll just squeeze it all into my weekly milage update. It was a very successful week of running. Wednesday I went and tried a new running group. I really like it! It seemed like a really supportive group of runners and a nice group of people in general. I don't generally like to run on Wednesday's, but i'm definitely going to try to make it to some more of the group runs. Plus, its a good way for me to meet new people, being new to the area. I've actually never been part of a running club before and going made me realize just how much I miss the commodore of a "team", like back in my high school days when I ran cross-country. My co-worker and I also got invited to attend a Tuesday night running group on the campus we work at, so I think i'm going to try to check that one out next week.

I did get lost again this week. Ugh. I have a horrible sense of direction! Now that I don't have mountains to tell me which direction is west i'm even worse (sad I know)! I mapped out a brand new 7 mile course for myself this morning....and well, that 7 miles turned into 9.25 miles. I got lost, thought I had found a street I was familiar with, then proceeded to run over a mile in the wrong direction before calling Dan and having him look at a map to tell me which way to go to get home. Prior to getting lost I did enjoy my new course though!

While running was very good this week, I neglected to fit my usual 2 weight lifting sessions back into the schedule, so i'm going to try to do a better job with that next week.

Here's the recap:

Sunday : 9.25 miles. I'm still getting used to the humidity here and being soaking wet when I come back from running, but it was nice temperature wise (in the low 70's) and I enjoyed the scenery at the park I was running around, before I got lost that is :-)

Saturday: off

Friday: 5 miles.

Thursday: off

Wednesday: 5 miles with the running club. Fun!

Tuesday : 3 miles.

Monday: off

Weekly Milage Total: 22.25

5/31 - 6/6 Weekly Update

Well, nothing too big to report this week. Marathon training does not start until June 21, so i'm just trying to keep to a somewhat normal running schedule until then, so that getting back into training isn't too much of a shock to the system. Speaking of shock, my May milage was shockingly low! I guess that's what happens when you taper, then move across the country. I did not make it to a running club this week, but I am starting to feel a little bit more comfortable picking out runs in my neighborhood and learning the lay of the land. I am also happy to report that I have not gotten lost again.... at least not yet :-) I also lifted weights again this past week for the first time since before tapering for the Colfax 1/2..... WOW has it been a while. I am SO sore! I also thought that I could re-create Body Pump class on my own by downloading the playlist. I figured it'd be pretty easy to figure out what the counts were supposed to be based on the music and my memory. That definitely did not turn out to be the case. I managed to do each body part for the right songs, but I definitely didn't have any memory of which parts of the songs were supposed to be 4 counts, 3, or 2...or 1. I think next time I'll just try to do 3 sets of 15 reps or something.

Anyway here's the recap:

Sunday - 6.21 miles. It was the first cool day since we've moved here, so for the first time I wasn't completely drenched in sweat (humidity is a killer, I will take high altitude any day over humidity!)

Saturday - 3 miles.

Friday - My own strange version of Body Pump

Thusday - 5 miles

Wednesday - off

Tuesday - 5 miles

Monday - off

Weekly Total: 19.21 miles